Cashman, Denis B. (1843–97), Fenian and writer, was born in 1843 at Dungarvan, Co. Waterford. He worked at first in Waterford city as a clerk for the law firm of Dobbyn & Tandy. He joined the IRB (probably soon after it was formed in 1858) and rose to become its ‘centre’ at Waterford. His clandestine Fenian activities took him to Dublin, where he was arrested (12 January 1867), having been reported as engaging in manufacturing rifle cartridges and distributing rifles. He was working shortly before as a clerk to William Smyth, law agent to Dublin corporation, and living at 5 Preston St. He was brought to trial in Dublin on a charge of treason-felony, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to seven years' penal servitude (19 February).
After solitary confinement at Millbank prison in England he was taken on board a ship, the Hougoumont, to be transported with other convicts, 61 of them Fenians, to Western Australia (30 September). On the passage from Sheerness to Fremantle, Cashman worked with other Fenians in producing a newspaper, the ‘Wild Goose’, in particular providing artwork and contributing verse. He also helped organise concerts at which ballads and recitations were performed. Cashman recorded his experiences of the voyage in a diary, the original of which is in East Carolina University Library. After arriving at Fremantle (January 1868) he worked as assistant to the clerk of works at the penal settlement.
On being pardoned and freed by the British government, he sailed for America on board the Baringa (October 1869), disembarked at San Francisco and made his way by railway to Boston, where, through John Boyle O'Reilly (qv), he obtained work on the distribution of the Pilot, a newspaper much read by Irish settlers. Soon he was also contributing articles and by 1872 was business manager; but a few years later he was superintendent of the municipal waste water department and over the years he held various other positions while continuing to write for the Pilot as well as contributing to other Boston papers. He was the author of The life of Michael Davitt (1881), which is, however, ‘in no sense a “life” but a collection of extracts from speeches . . . strung together by partizan and hagiographical narrative’ (Moody, Davitt, p. xix). Denis Cashman died 8 January 1897 at his home, Worcester St., Boston. By his wife Catherine or Kate, whom he married in 1862 and whom after his release he rejoined in Boston, he had three sons (two of whom died young) and two daughters. A practising catholic (of which his diary is evidence), he was invested just before leaving for Australia with the order of the scapular.